Canada’s PM seeks to smooth over past ructions in relationship with China as trade war takes its toll
During the final stretch of Canada’s spring election campaign, Mark Carney told a debate audience that China was the country’s “biggest geopolitical risk”. He pointed to its attempts to meddle in elections and its recent efforts to disrupt Canada’s Arctic claims.
When Carney’s government plane touches down in Beijing this week, it will be the first time a Canadian prime minister has been welcomed in nearly a decade. The trip, undertaken amid the rupturing of global economic and political alliances, reflects a desire by Ottawa to mend a broken relationship with a global superpower that uses its vast and lucrative market to both woo and punish countries.
But Carney’s state visit, the result of methodical diplomatic calculations, also speaks to the pain of a trade war with the US and an urgent need to expand Canada’s exports in order to offset mounting economic punishment inflicted by its neighbour and largest trading partner.
“There is a risk that China views Canada as weak, struggling and abused by President Donald Trump’s administration – and it sees an opportunity to present itself as the reasonable and stable adult in the room,” says Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat and senior Asia adviser for the thinktank International Crisis Group. “The Communist party has given up persuading people that they’re benevolent. Instead, they offer competence and predictability. But it also gives Mark Carney leverage to say: if you think our relationship with the United States is getting worse, what are you willing to give us?”
